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Tips for maintaining a complete and accurate equipment registry

The equipment registry is one of the most important tools in your kit when it comes to maintenance and reliability. It can be the foundation of your planned maintenance, lubrication, training and repair programs, plus it helps with regulatory compliance and safety programs. Your spare parts management program depends upon a complete and accurate register with the requisite analysis for regular service parts along with the insurance spares identified through failure modes and effects analysis. Don’t forget that your financials are also tied in through depreciation, amortization and cost center assignments.

Equipment history gets tied to the registry along with manuals, drawings, procedures, labor costs and reports. That is why it is the foundation upon which so much is built, and that is why it is so vital that you get it right and work to maintain its accuracy.

Yes, it has initial cost plus a maintenance cost, but the payback can be significant and continuous, so make the investment even if you have to bump something else down the list. The man-hours that you save long term will repay your investment many times over. You can consider the downtime and spares savings as icing on the cake.

So, what should the registry look like? If you have an enterprise asset management (EAM) or computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), you are already set up with specific fields in a database. Review those fields to be sure that they satisfy your needs, and then review the registry for completeness and accuracy. You may be able to rename some fields to suit your needs. If you don’t have an EAM or CMMS with built-in equipment registry, or you are evaluating a program for your plant, then be sure that it provides a minimum number of data fields for the basic information that you need. This is one of those cases where more is better. Of course, smaller plants can manage with cheaper versions of programs or they can even manage just fine with simple spreadsheets if they are configured correctly.

What fields do you need as a bare minimum? I would want to know the basics like equipment name, manufacturer name, model number, serial number, location installed in the plant, description and date installed. You can add fields for service vendor, warranty period, capacity, functional location, superior equipment number, bill of materials (BOM) file number if not included as a separate function in your software, and the original purchase order number if desired.

• Equipment name: This is what you call it for your records. Make this understandable to everyone, and don’t be afraid of abbreviations or acronyms if they are common to your process. You can form the standard here for your plant, so think about it up front. You will put this on labels, reports, SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) screens, procedures, and work order titles, so it needs to have a structure that makes sense. You will also sort data like work orders by this name, so it needs to be a standardized structure.
• Manufacturer name: This is the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and not the guy who sold it to you or installed it. List that outfit under the vendor name or in the comment section.
• Model number: This number connects you to OEM manuals and services, plus it works with the serial number to tell your vendor exactly which machine you are talking about when you call for help.
• Serial number: The serial number with the model number is very important information. With just the model and serial number, the OEM can usually pull up any information that you need from them on parts and procedures. Verify that what you have recorded matches the actual nameplate on the unit. Some manufacturers maintain separate part numbers and drawing numbers for each serial number unit. Plus, there may be some subtle difference in your unit because of a special requirement that is only recorded in their specific serial number record. You don’t want to order a $10,000 part, wait eight weeks for it to arrive, and then find that it doesn’t quite fit.
• Date installed: You use this date for warranty coverage, for the depreciation financials, and for setting up initial service and PM schedules. It can also help managers decide if it is time to upgrade or not.
• Location: This is your in-house location code. Some large companies include country and plant codes on the front, but the basics are building, floor and quadrant. You can also use column numbers in the place of or in addition to the quadrant code to narrow it down even further. Note: Column coding presupposes that you have them prominently labeled.
• Description: This is the time that you establish your standard nomenclature for your equipment. It needs to be descriptive, standard and universally understood. I would limit this to 40 to 60 characters for ease of sorting later.
• Comment: The comment field is a free-form text block that you use to capture what the equipment does for your plant and any special information that you want available for use, such as the vendor name or unit capacity or anything else that you feel is important. If you don’t do it anywhere else, take this opportunity to record the design capacity and the machine’s relationship to other equipment (e.g.: Supply fan 04 for HVAC unit 03-03-12 with capacity of 1500cfm @ 5″w.c.)

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of your equipment registry. Your technical training, spare parts, financials and work order systems all depend on accurate equipment records. Good records can shorten the troubleshooting times, facilitate training of new personnel, capture modification events, contribute to better management decisions by providing timely and dependable financial data, and increase reliability over the life span of the equipment. Couple these records with a labeling program and you can expect to enjoy good experiences with your installed equipment base. If you have poor records now, no one has to tell you about frustrating breakdowns and poor performance because you are living that downside now.

Remember: Reliability doesn’t cost; it pays.

Please respond to this blog post with your questions, comments, thoughts and solutions on the topic of inventory management and CMMS/EAM systems.

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